by Kirk Allmond
When we got to the swimming hole, the forest around us opened up, the sun was setting behind the Blue Ridge Mountains. The sky had the most amazing cotton ball clouds lit up with reds and oranges. I stopped short, swung her around in front of me and stepped in close. Our eyes locked as I put my arms around her small frame, I slowly leaned in to her neck and whispered in her ear, “There’s a human on the other side of the swimming hole. He’s hidden in a mulberry bush on the far bank, about ten o’clock. He’s holding something that looks like a gun, but I don’t think it’s pointed at us. I’m pretty sure he’s just watching.”
“What do you want to do?” Leo whispered; her voice sexy and low in my ear.
“How fast are you? I’m a pretty good shot, but I don’t want to kill him. I just want to talk to him.”
“I think I could run on water. I’ve been wondering if I could, seems like a good time to try.”
“Is that even possible?”
“There are lizards that do it. If I don’t make it, you can shoot him. I know I can do this though.”
Continuing the embrace, I whispered “That water is deep! It’s probably twenty-five or thirty feet to the bottom there. How fast can you swim?”
“I don’t know. I’ll go around the deep water; I can skip across those rocks if I have too.”
“Okay. So, uhh... We should probably make this look convincing.” I pulled my head away, and looked into her eyes.
She leaned forward, meeting my lips, softly holding them against mine as she tilted her head to the side. I brought my hands to the sides of her face, running one around the back of her head, wrapped up in her hair, the other holding her head as I pressed more firmly, my tongue tracing the outline of her lips before parting them, and slowly circling hers. I felt her breath catch, and then hot on my cheek, as she squeezed herself against me, pressing into me as we kissed. Our auras both glowed bright green, and as we kissed they started to merge. I could literally feel her emotions. I had no business knowing how she felt, but I had no way of blocking it. I tried to pull my aura back, or disconnect them, but nothing worked.
I took her hand again, and we walked a little bit around the swimming hole, towards the rock damn that had originally been designed to divert water down the mill race from the 1700's. The dam had been knocked over long ago, but would need to be rebuilt; I had an idea to use the mill race, the old mill foundation, and a bunch of car alternators to generate power. When we got there, I squeezed her hand and whispered, “Go.”
Leo was off, moving so fast her feet barely touched the water. She skipped across it like a stone, and plowed into the guy tackling him to the ground. I ran across the stones of the mill race dam, taking a minute or so to make the crossing. By the time I got there, Leo had a very large knife to his throat and had him pinned to the ground with it. It was pressing into his skin, a hair away from slicing into his trachea.
“What is your name, soldier?” I asked. He was wearing military fatigues, and had a single chevron on his arm, which I thought meant he was a private first class.
“PFC Michael Cunningham.”
“PFC Cunningham, what are you doing here?”
“PFC Michael Cunningham.”
“PFC Cunningham. Did you see how fast she was? Do you know how quickly she can saw that sword through your neck? This is not 2009; you are trespassing on my land, operating a covert surveillance mission on my property. Do you understand why I would be upset?”
“PFC Michael Cunningham.”
“Leo. Cut his throat.” I said coldly as I turned and walked away. Leo knew how I felt about killing humans, I knew she wouldn’t do it, but this was my last desperate bluff.
“Wait!” Cunningham squeaked.
I turned around, and took a step back towards him.
“Cunningham, why are you watching us.”
“Colonel Frye ordered me to come here to watch your patrols; he is worried that the zombies are going to ambush you. He sent me to watch this border of the property for any zombie activity.”
“Colonel Frye ordered you to help us?” I asked.
“My orders were to quietly end any zombie I see shambling up your property. We’ve been doing it for three days.”
“PFC Cunningham, please report to Colonel Frye that we can handle our own borders. If I see another of his men I will shoot them in the leg. I don’t believe in killing the living, but I can’t have unknown forces watching my men and my property.” I ordered.
“Now, get up, and run.”
Leo removed the blade from his throat. He stood up and said, “Thanks Tookes,” as he ran off, up the hill directly away from our position. About a minute later we heard a small motor turn over, and either a quad or a motorcycle race off. I listened as long as I could hear it; I never heard the vehicle slow down or stop.
Leo clearly didn’t need my help, seeing as she could walk on water, but I helped her across the stones back to the other side of the river, and we started across the back border of the property, walking along the deep ditch Marshall and Leo had dug. The ditch could be climbed on foot, but I’m not sure a quad or a motorcycle could make it. At this point, that was the goal. It gave us a demarcation point, and it helped to keep anyone from driving vehicles onto the property.
We finished our loop and made it back to the house without any further sightings of humans. There was one shambling zombie which Leo dispatched with one of her collapsible batons. Either Frye’s men stayed well hidden, or they’d been recalled. I could make out auras through the brush, but I didn’t see anything.
As I removed my boots on the back porch of the house, Max came running out in his cars and trucks PJ’s, which were starting to get a little too short. I needed to add a clothing run to my long to-do list.
“Daddy!” he exclaimed as he came running over to me. “I missed you!”
“I missed you too buddy. Let’s go to bed. I’ll read you a story about three crazy bears.”
I held Max’s hand as we walked up the steps to our bedroom, just like we’d done almost every night of his life.
30. The Mounting Stone
Once Max was safely tucked into bed, I came back downstairs. It was ten after eight at night, 20:10, I corrected myself, and I had a lot to think about. In about an hour I had to address the people. I still didn’t know nearly enough of them, and that was really starting to bother me. Bookbinder had said most of them would willingly lay their lives down for me, and yet I didn’t know anyone’s name.
I grabbed a water bottle out of the recycling, filled it from the tap, and went out on the back porch to finally have some alone time. I can’t remember the last time I was actually by myself. I mean, technically I was alone when I went to the Haversham farm house to attack the school, but I was so preoccupied, there was no introspection. I was really looking forward to just sitting on the porch swaying in a rocking chair, trying to make sense of my life.
Suddenly, I’m the general of a small army. I have five fire teams under my command, plus my own team of Me, Marshall, John, and Leo. I needed to find some sort of uniform for us, not only to help separate us from the bad guys, but to form some cohesion among the groups. In the old days I would have gone online and had patches created for each fire team, and then had them express shipped to the house. Now there is no internet and probably no businesses that make patches and no shipping. I wonder if any of the women in the camp could help with that. I don’t really have any idea what to ask for, but I put it on the list.
The sun had fully set; it was really dark at night these days. I needed a flashlight for each person, and rechargeable batteries. I needed weapons, holsters, ammunition, and packs. I needed water transportation and storage, so the folks in the renovated hay-loft didn’t have to climb down a ladder to get a drink. I needed materials to finish off the hayloft; it was going to get really cold in there this winter if I didn’t find some sheetrock and insulation. They needed a bathroom up there too, but that was way down the list. Sanitation was going to bec
ome a concern in fairly short order though, as were the food stocks. There was abundant game around locally, but it needed to be managed. This many people to feed we’d need two deer per day or more.
I checked my watch; it was now 8:30, time to head down to the barn. I needed to stop calling it that and start calling it a dormitory or something less offensive.
When I got there, most of the people were milling around the large open area in front of the barn. Out behind was the pasture, and like all pastures the part closest to the gate was a mud pit.
I shook a lot of hands, met a lot of people, none of which I was really going to be able to remember. I used all the mnemonics I could think of, I repeated people’s names and tried to connect them by relationship, but there were over three hundred people there. Leo, John, Marshall, and Mom all came walking down the flagstone path right at 8:45. When they arrived, they stood behind me. Just as I stepped up on the three hundred year old carriage mounting stone, Charlie Bookbinder appeared out of the crowd, stood behind, and left of me.
“Everybody!” I projected to be heard over the general din of a hundred and fifty conversations, but I did not expect the immediate hush that fell over the crowd.
“Six short months ago, we all lived in comfort.” I began. “Our houses were warm in the winter and cold in the summer. We had all the food we could ever want. We had the internet at our fingertips. With a simple click of a button all of the combined knowledge of mankind was available to us.” I spoke slowly, deliberately. I hadn’t prepared anything in advance; I wanted to speak from the heart.
“Less than four months ago, I watched a man on the street in front of my comfortable, climate controlled office building bite, chew up, and swallow a chunk of another man’s throat. Then both of them stood up and walked away. I watched friends from my office get killed by groups of wandering, mindless zombies, and then in turn, those friends tried to kill me. But they didn’t.” The crowd nodded, and made sounds of acknowledgement. Pretty much every one of us had had a similar encounter.
“That day, I started driving south, from Pennsylvania to my family’s Home Place. On the way south, I ran into another kind of zombie. These zombies were smart. They were fast. They were tough. And they were looking for me. In Frederick Maryland, they laid a trap for me, and shot my wife, she died almost instantly. I underestimated them that time, and it cost me dearly. That’s a mistake I won’t make again. Their goal was to stop me from getting here. They failed.” More sounds of understanding, a little louder at this pause.
“At the Potomac River, they were once again waiting on me, this time they’d blockaded the bridge with abandoned cars, and set smart zombies waiting for me. They were trying to stop me from making it here. They failed.” The crowd started talking here, kind of a white noise effect, I couldn’t pick any particular conversations, but overall it felt like the crowd was with me.
“They laid another trap for me in Leesburg, Virginia, and again, they failed. Something told me to take an alternate route through Leesburg. I believe that something, whatever it may be, led me specifically to Leo and John. In Leesburg Virginia, they were trying to stop me from getting to this place. My family’s place. They failed.”
“Right up the road, around a bend in the highway, they set another roadblock. This time they had at least a hundred zombies. They tried to stop me from getting home, right at the edge of my own property. They underestimated my determination, and they failed. This time, they lost one of their leaders. They lost the super who coordinated the entire chase down Route 15 from my house. Her name was Penelope, and she failed.” Cheers rose at this point, the group was showing some excitement, some hope.
“When I got here, we started fortifying a place for my family. We all worked to keep my son Max safe. My brother Marshall built the fortifications around the house. Leo and John patrolled and helped. My mother has kept us all fed. Everyone in my family, and I include Leo and John as my family pulled together to do the hard work to keep me safe when I was shot, and to keep Max happy and safe while I was out of commission.”
“A new zombie named Watley came up with a plan to attack me here. He tried to use human shields to hide his zombies. He tried to keep Leo busy with parlor tricks. He orchestrated that attack specifically to exploit my weakness. My weakness, according to Watley, was that I won’t kill a living human. I believe that is our strength. I believe it is a strength because it brought all of us together. Watley tried to exploit my humanity, to use it against me to destroy me and those I love. He failed.”
“You showed that fucker Tookes!” yelled someone.
“Thank God for you Tookes!” another yelled.
Someone started clapping in the back, and within a second the whole place was applauding and cheering. After a couple of seconds, I spread my arms, palms down and the crowd quieted again.
“At every turn, these super zombies have failed. They aren’t super. Sure, they’re physically stronger than us. Sure, they heal very quickly. Sure Watley could fly. Even with those vast benefits, they cannot win. Even though some of them are smarter than us. Even though some of them can teleport. Even though some of them heal almost as fast as we can damage them, they still lose to us. It’s because of our humanity, because our greatest weakness in their eyes is our greatest strength that we will prevail. They want our planet. They want our lives. They want our bodies. They will fail.”
Applause broke out again, as well as some cheering. It took a full thirty seconds for me to calm them so I could continue.
“They will fail because we are right. We are good, and good always prevails over evil. They will fail because we are fighting for our lives, but more importantly, we are fighting for our loved ones.”
“Earlier today, I met a potential ally. Colonel Joshua Frye, of the First Virginia Regiment of the former United States Army came to pay us a visit. We got off to a rocky start, but I have every reason to believe he is a good man. He has offered to take in any of you that would like to go live with him. He is stationed at Mount Pony; he says he has food and medical facilities. Any of you who would like to go with Colonel Frye are free to go. You are not prisoners here; you can go there and be well taken care of by the remnants of the US Army. If you stay here, it will be hard. We all have to work to take care of one another. We all have to pitch in and do our parts, and it will be hard work. But we will be together, and we will be stronger for it.”
“We’re with you Tookes!”
I was really flattered by the response. I had no idea this would turn out like this, I’d just intended to say a few words to the group.
“If you stay here, you will be expected to contribute, in whatever way you can. If you can cook, I’m sure my mother; Sharon could use your help. If you can sew, I have a project for you. If you can knit, we’re all going to need a lot of sweaters. If you know about animals, or are a farmer, we will definitely need your skills. “I worked in an office, creating Excel spreadsheets and yelling at people for being late. I have a lot to learn, my old skills are pretty much worthless. Regardless of whom you were before or what you did before, we are all a family now, if you’d like to be a part of it. And family sticks together.”
“Thank you for listening to me. We will get through this. We will create a new life for ourselves. This is our time, this is our planet, and this is our life. The zombies will fail.”
I stepped down off the stone, applause and a cheer went up through the crowd. The auras were almost all shades of yellow and green. I noticed one that didn’t fit in, over in the back corner.
“Sir, you should have been a politician. That’s one of the best speeches I’ve ever heard.”
“Charlie, I’d have been a terrible politician. I meant what I said up there.”
We all grinned at that. Leo, John, Marshall, and mom headed into the crowd to meet our new family members.
“Charlie, who’s that over in the back corner. Wearing a dark green t-shirt and jeans, short dark hair.”
“That
’s Ken, uhh. Ken Sanders sir. His wife and four children died at the school. They must have been fed to the zombies before you got there. When we all left to come here they were alive, but they never came home from the school. He went out there last night, against orders, and found his daughters doll in with the charred zombie corpses. You really did a number on them sir.”
“Thanks for the information Charlie. I need to go talk to him. I think he’s going to try to kill me.”
31. Sanders
“Charlie, do you have a radio? Do Leo and John have one?”
“I do, but I don’t think they do sir.” Replied Charlie.
“Please go find them. Sanders is going to make a move. I don’t want him hurt, and I don’t want to scare him. If he runs, let him go.”
“Yes sir,” Bookbinder answered, but I could tell he was unhappy about the order.
“Charlie,” I said. “He can’t hurt me. I’ll know what he intends to before he does, I can handle one skinny angry guy.”
It took me a couple of minutes to work the crowd. They were tired and dirty and needed to change clothes. I counted a handful of people with bedroom slippers on. I was partially stalling, to give Bookbinder time to find and convey the message to Leo and John. At least twenty or more had on sneakers. Most of them only had the clothes they were wearing. One man wasn’t wearing a shirt. Another was wearing boxer shorts and a T-shirt. I remembered that most of these people had been rounded up in the middle of the night. All of them needed soap. There were six babies under walking age. We had no diapers. Upon closer inspection, I saw a baby wearing a T-shirt for a diaper. I wondered if that was the shirtless man’s baby.
One of the things that has developed over time is the instinctual understanding of how the others on our team work. I didn’t have to issue direct orders to them, and really I didn’t like to. They were my partners, not my subordinates. Bookbinder would have a fit about that, but I just wasn’t in a position to give orders to them.